The next day, Wednesday, was the first of October, and Atlantic High was alive with the thrum of anticipation that the upcoming Halloween Ball brought with it. Whispers of costumes, dates, and post-party horror movie marathons surrounded me wherever I went, and I could indulge in none of it.
The only person who I could share any sort of experience with - in our enviable joint-ban - was Carmen Vespin. I would have outwardly denied that I was trying to avoid her that day, but the truth was that I was picking my way so cautiously down each corridor that you could have sworn the whole school was rigged with landmines.
When I finally did bump into her in the hiatus before last class, she smiled at me so sweetly it was almost spooky. It was the deadly, 'I'm going to kill you later' sort of sweet that made me more nervous than if she'd come right up to my face and sworn vengeance brandishing a sharpened mascara wand and eyelash-curlers-turned-weapons. She was like a grinning jack-in-the-box that had yet to pop.
"Hey, Saff!" she chirped from across the hallway. There was a cold twinkle to her eye, as sharp as flint, and then she vanished around the corner.
"What was that all about?" Debbie appeared at my shoulder, and I almost leapt a whole three-feet into the air - an athletic feat that I would never have accomplished had it not been for the motivational startle.
"Debbie! Bloody hell, you scared me."
Debbie chose to ignore me. "The last I heard, the police were over at her house yesterday and her parents weren't too happy. So why is she smiling at you? Did I miss something?"
It was true. The news had been passed around like a lump of clay that, by the time it reached me, had been rearranged into something virtually unrecognisable. I'd even heard people say that Edith and had gotten so riled up that she'd attacked the police officers. The story was so convoluted that I wasn't exactly sure what had really happened; all I knew was that Ivana really had turned up at the Vespins house.
"No, it was a threat dressed up all pretty," I said.
"Ah." Debbie considered for a moment, and then whirled on me. "Okay, we need to talk. This is all getting pretty out of hand, Saffy."
"What is?" I frowned at her.
"This crusade that's going on between you and Carmen. Three weeks ago you just didn't like each other, now you're at each other's throats and getting each other banned from parties and getting the cops involved in stuff. We need to talk, whether you like it or not."
"Uh... okay?"
"Tonight, at The Old Curiosity-"
"I work on Wednesdays," I cut in. Debbie fiddled irritably at her lip piercing.
"It doesn't matter, you can talk on the job," she said. "You're going to tell me about everything that's going on with you because, to be frank, I have absolutely no idea."
"Where did the saying 'to be frank' even come from? I mean, who is Frank? Why can't it be Steve? Like, 'to be Steve'?"
"Saffy." Debbie observed me sternly.
I sighed and put both arms in the air. "Alright, fine. We can talk."
Debbie crossed her arms, her eyes prodding at me as though she didn't quite trust me. "Good. That's better," she said, and then her features softened. "I just feel like we barely talk anymore. I have to hear everything from other people before I hear it from you, and it shouldn't be like that. I mean, that's what instant messages are for, right? You're insulting the institute of the text message, Saffy."
"I'm sorry," I said, and this time I was sincere. "You're right. Tonight, you can just call me Frank."
Debbie stared. "What?"
"I'll be Frank with you, get it?"
At that, Debbie threw her arms around my shoulder and ushered me down the corridor towards our last lesson. "You're such a weirdo, but that's why I love you. Now come on, Steve, we're gonna be late for class."
*
"Wait, so do you actually think Carmen is capable of breaking into somebody's house and ransacking a bedroom?" Debbie eyed me dubiously over the top of her milkshake, a straw protruding from between her plum-painted lips.
I shrugged. "I don't know; is it really that hard if you leave a window open? Plus, she's the only person I know who has any sort of agenda against me and my family. And she wasn't in school that day."
"The circumstances are highly suspicious," Debbie admitted, letting out a low whistle.
"Yep. But there's no proof, so there's absolutely nothing the police can do."
I said all of this with as solemn a face as I could manage, wholly knowing the weight of my lies and the incredibly ease with which I was weaving them. It was unnerving. I felt a pang of guilt surge through me; Debbie was the one person I'd told everything to. But, in all honesty, there was only one person in the world I could have turned to with these secrets, and she'd passed away six years ago.
I missed my grandmother more than ever. She'd been my blanket against the world, and each night without her was like sleeping on a cold, hard floor, naked against the wind and the rain.
"That devious little wench," Debbie hissed. I wasn't sure when she'd exchanged her usual personality for that of a pompous old spinster, but her utterings coaxed a laugh out of me, at least.
"Mm-hmm," I nodded, and then I moved over to serve a customer at the bar. The shift had been pretty quiet so far, and even now only a couple of tables were occupied. Bev was sorting through the old volumes of books that she used to decorate the shelves along the walls, patting at them with a little feather duster.
"When did things get so out of hand?" Debbie wondered aloud as I veered back to her.
"When Carmen decided to violate my privacy and stamp personal photos all over the school," I replied, and Debbie's cheeks reddened. I shook my head, unwilling for the conversation to take a disagreeable turn. "Anyway, enough about me. Let's talk about you for a change."
A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "Okay. What do you want to talk about?"
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, come on. Don't pretend like there's nothing going on with you right now. You never did explain to me what happened with Band Guy Number Three, or what's going on between you and Wesley Adams-"
"There's nothing going on between me and Wesley Adams-"
Another eye-roll, this one more exaggerated. "Okay, and bears don't poop in the woods. I've seen the way you two are around each other, and I can't decide whether if it's chemistry or just the two of you being weird. Please, clarify."
"Does Bev allows allow you to drink on the job, or is it just an occasional thing?"
"Debbie," I said austerely, and she crossed her arms across her chest with a sigh.
"Fine. What do you want to know?"
"First, I want to know what happened between you and Band Guy Number Three."
"Why do I feel like I'm in an interrogation room?" Debbie begrudgingly picked up her milkshake again and took to slurping at it as she told me the story. "Where do I start? Okay, so the night that Jet played I came to watch with Stuart, and the whole time I could feel his eyes on me. It wasn't even like I was doing anything but bobbing my head. It wasn't like I was singing along and holding a banner in the air, swaying in fan-girl ecstasy, right?"
Debbie's voice was rising parallel to her growing anger, but at that she stopped and took a deep breath before continuing. "Anyway, Stewart didn't like that I appeared to be enjoying myself. And then Wes wandered over and sat near us, and he talked to me the whole time. Do you even know how much that kid can talk? It's like he's got a motor somewhere in his body. So that just annoyed Stuart even more, until he just sat there with the biggest frown that I've ever seen, and when I finally asked him what was wrong, he tried to accuse me of neglecting him."
Debbie's story was a long-winded one. It wasn't long before I found myself drifting off into a trance and looking out of the window. There was a girl playing in the little car-park outside, a little girl with blonde hair and a flowing dress that reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. She couldn't have been older than six or seven.
"-and since then he hasn't stopped calling me-"
The girl was twirling, laughing, the autumnal wind catching her hair and pulling it up towards the night sky in ghostly wreaths. There was something familiar about her, something that stood out in my mind like a giant fluorescent exclamation point. Did I know her?
"He was meant to be my date to the Halloween Ball, but I'm just not sure anymore-"
She was hopping from puddle to puddle now, her shoes vanishing into the still water and- my thoughts jarred inside my head. The water remained still. She jumped from one puddle to another, and each time her feet disappeared beneath the surface, the water around them didn't disperse. There was no splashing, no ripples of disruption. It was almost as though there was nobody disturbing the water at all.
My eyes flickered to the wall, to the strip of grey-tiled photographs that ran along the length of the noticeboard like a prophetic obituary. The faces of four missing persons stared out at me, but what made my mind explode was that one of them was dancing outside.
Lucy Lidlow.
*********
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